The land under the tracks on the C&E Line north of Clybourn belonged to the Chicago Milwaukee Corporation (CMC), a holding company. When CMC sold the Milwaukee Road railroad subsidiary to the Soo Line in 1985 CMC retained the underlying land and allowed the Soo Line to operate over it via an easement on the C&E Line on Chicago\'s North Side.
CMC eventually became CMC Heartland, then Heartland Partners. Its primary business was the liquidation and/or redevelopment of former railroad property including timber rights out west, the former freight yards in the River West area now occupied by condos, the former Milwaukee Road yard and shop facilities east of where Miller Park now stands in downtown Milwaukee, and more. Proceeds were paid in the form of dividends to CMC shareholders and later succesor Heartland partners.
In 2007 Heartland sold the last of its assets and itself ceased to exist. The land under the tracks in this stretch by Belden belongs to whatever investment group bought this piece of land from Heartland with most probably future development in mind. I would have to go back to the original SEC filings to see who bought this narrow corridor of land. Chicago Terminal Railroad (CTR) operates over it by virtue of the easement it obtained when taking over from CN/Soo Line unless it also purchased the land in a separate transaction which seems unlikely.
Its value for development into residential or retail use is crimped by the fact that an active rail line runs through it, plus the current recession.
The trickier part is the section on Lakewood north of Wrightwood which operates on a city street by virtue of a franchise agreement that goes back to the 1887 and a predecessor company of the C&E. Upon abandonment the City of Chicago retakes possession. This came up in 2002 when the Tribune Company sought to extend Wrigley Field west across the former Milwaukee Road ROW on land it thought it had acquired in 1982 from the railroad. The City of Chicago asserted its rights to this strip of land and the Tribune had to pay a second time, this time to the city, for the same land.
The photos show the former southbound main and a siding emerging once again from underneath the pavement. The townhomes on the east are on the site of the former Richardson Chemical plant, a rail-served customer through at least 1979.
